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Mahesh

11/01/24 06:30 AM IST

Square Kilometer Array project

In News
  • India had decided to formally join the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) project, an international scientific collaboration working to build the world’s largest radio telescope.
About the SKA
  • The Square Kilometer Array will not be a single large telescope, but a collection of thousands of dish antennas operating as a single unit.
  • The name, Square Kilometer Array, comes from the original intention to create one square kilometre (one million square metre) of effective area for collecting radio waves.
  • This was meant to be achieved by installing thousands of smaller antennas in a specific array design that would make them function like a single radio telescope.
  • As of now, it appears that the USD 2.4-billion project (2021 prices) would eventually have a lesser collecting area than one square kilometre, but the original name has been retained.
  • The antennas, about 200 of them in South Africa and more than 130,000 in Australia, are being installed in sparsely populated locations, chosen to ensure they are as far away from human activities as possible.
  • This has been done in order to minimise signal interference from undesirable Earth-based sources.
  • Construction at both the sites began in December 2022, and the first phase of the project is expected to be completed by next year.
  • Once operational, SKA would be between 5 to 60 times more powerful than the most advanced existing radio telescopes functioning in comparable frequency ranges.
Significance for India
  • Though none of the SKA facilities would be located in India, there are immense science and technology gains for the country by participating in the project as a full member.
  • In this regard, SKA offers opportunities similar to the LHC or the ITER, which too are located on foreign soil but have brought rich dividends to the Indian scientific community.
  • A full member status would provide India preferential access to the SKA facilities. Most existing telescopes operate under an open-use policy which allows research groups from any country to get time on the facility through competitive bidding by making a scientific case.
  • Member countries will get preferential allocation of time on the radio telescope, roughly in proportion to their contribution to the project, and only limited time slots would be available through competitive bidding.
  • The Indian participation in the project is being led by Pune-based National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), but 22 institutions are collaborating on SKA-related activities in the country.
  • These include not just leading research institutions and some IITs and IISERs, but also a couple of universities and colleges. A few private companies are also involved.
Radio Astronomy
  • Radio astronomy is something in which India already has highly developed capabilities.
  • The Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (GMRT) near Pune is one of the most advanced — and sought-after — facilities in the world, which has been producing remarkable scientific results.
  • There are other similar facilities in Ooty, Nainital and Bengaluru.
  • The SKA, which will become the most promising tool for research in the most pressing scientific questions in astronomy, offers the next logical step forward for Indian scientists working in this area.
India's Contribution
  • India has been involved in the SKA project right from its inception in the 1990s, and contributed to the design and development of the telescope as well as in negotiating the SKA Observatory Convention, the international treaty that established the facility as an intergovernmental organisation.
  • The main contribution has come in the development, and operation, of the Telescope Manager, the ‘neural network’ or the software that will run the entire facility.
  • There are plans to set up an SKA regional centre in the country that will be part of the global network to process and store data and make it available for the scientific community.
  • Indian scientists have identified several areas of research for which they want to use the SKA telescopes.
  • These include studies relating to the evolution of the early universe, the formation and evolution of galaxies, neutron star physics, and solar sciences.
Source- Indian Express

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